America Goddam

There will come a moment in your black life, your brown life, your colored life, when you break.

Not in half though. You broke in half a long time ago when you discovered America rejected you for the color of your skin. You broke in thirds when you discovered your country also rejected the idea of intersectionality. It ignored the interconnection between your brown skin, your gender, your sexual identity and your oppression, for instance. Your country told you you could only be one thing, suffer one thing.

I'm probably forgetting or neglecting many other breaks, muddling up the order. For arguments sake, however, lets say the break I'm talking about is the 3rd; when you succumb to the helplessness of your oppression. You want out.

The 3rd break is quiet. It's not nearly as Earth shattering as the first, maybe you're becoming numb. Yes, the 3rd break is the sound of ice cubes cracking in the drink of your glass, small and dull. You don't even mentally acknowledge such a sound; it's easily dismissed. Which is why the first time you think, "I don't want to live here anymore," you immediately push that thought deep down inside you.

I mean think of the logistics. It's a total nightmare. Where would you go? How could you afford it? Where would you work? What about your friends? What about your family? What about the struggle? No no no no. Impossible. Illogical.

And then Trayvon Martin

And then Rekia Boyd

And then Renisha McBride

And then Yvette Smith

And then Eric Garner

And then Michael Brown

And then Laquan McDonald

And then Tamir Rice

And then Walter Scott

And then Natasha McKenna

And then Freddie Grey

And Flint

And Ferguson

And Charleston

And Standing Rock

And then Donald Trump

With every loss you gear up for battle. You raise your voice. You make your signs. You march the streets. You call your senators and representatives. You post your resolutions and petitions on Facebook. You burn with anger. You're heavy with sorrow. You rage and sag. And before you can begin to recover,

Something. Else. Happens.

And the cycle repeats.

How have you not lost your mind? Spoiler Alert: You have. But it doesn't happen all at once. Thank God. You lose just a little piece at a time. Maybe bigger pieces for larger traumas. I mean you're still you, there's just less of you.

But you can't stop. Gotta keep fighting. Gotta keep pushing. Gotta keep moving forward.

But you're beginning to call bullsh*t. You call it out especially when prompted with the "self-care" bit. Because you know you would have to be praying, meditating, sleeping and unplugging 24/7 (for who knows how long) to undo what can never be undone, to rest in a way that never restores you, to laugh and smile now knowing more tears are coming later.

All the while that ice cube in your drink sits, still cracked, perhaps cracking further. It's split into many pieces but somehow still whole, like you. You see every time, "something else happens," you revisit, "I don't want to live here anymore."

Of course you aren't the first or the last to feel this way.

So did Nina.

Nina Simone. The singer, songwriter, pianist, author and activist caught up in the deep, deadly racial divide of the 1960s. Nina Simone: voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She too went through cycles of outrage and resistance. She resisted through the death of Medgar Evers, through the death of four little black girls in a Birmingham church, and through the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She resisted through "black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, from the poplar trees."

Despite everything, she shouted to the world that you could be young, gifted and black. She told God to damn Mississippi. She shared the experiences of four black women. She put their stories center stage for the whole world to see, hear and understand. She sacrificed her career for the struggle because nothing scares White America more than a brilliant, loud, black woman who calls them out on their sh*t. Thus, she was blacklisted by the industry. She was never allowed to flourish, never given her due.

But Simone didn't just continue the cycle.

She broke it.

She moved to Barbados in 1973 after being fed up with American racism and the struggle for freedom, a self-imposed exile. In an interview with Jet magazine Nina explains, "I left this country [America] because I didn't like this country. I didn't like what it was doing to my people and I left."

You can imagine. Forget the struggle.

You'll move someplace where everyone looks like you and they aren't perpetually hounded by the powers that be. Someplace remote. Where you won't have to read another article about another dead black boy/girl/man/woman/transgender person. You'll be oblivious to it all. You'll be in your own little world. You'll be safe.

You need this.

How can you stay here? Wake up and spin with the world like everything's okay while white nationalists lay claim to the white house. While Flint still doesn't have clean drinking water. While they move to poison more water in North Dakota and elsewhere. While no one cares about 13 year old brown boys or their mothers. While no one cares about the voices of women. While black lives still don't matter. While they threaten your healthcare and your womanhood. While they don't give a damn about education.

How can you, in your threadbare sanity, be a part of such a system?

Nina gave you permission to dream of sunny beaches and carefree days. You long for a place, a day, when no one will hate you because of how much melanin is in your skin.

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But you do not know if such a place exists.

And that day is lost to you.

You are not Simone.

So you pull your head out of the clouds, rest them back on your shoulders.

You watch the ice in your drink melt and pretend you never questioned leaving.

And then.....